Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague, the member for Sherbrooke, for raising this today. We all recognize how important water is.
As well, of course, with all the discussions we are having of late about the environment and what is happening with our environment and the quality and quantity of our water, I think it is a relevant debate. It is misleading, of course, because of the premise of the motion we are debating, and I was part of that debate in committee, where I tried to raise the facts for the opposition members, who were not prepared to listen.
We heard a little lecture from that member this morning about committee procedures. I would beg to differ in regard to when a witness comes to committee and is totally off the topic that is being discussed that day and the chairman asks if the witness could please bring it back on topic. I supported our committee chair because we had called in a witness to speak on a specific subject. Our chair made the right decision.
I will stand behind our chair's decision. We were trying to bring the debate around to the topic of that day. Not only did that individual show great disrespect for our chair, who has spent as much time in that chair as you have, Mr. Speaker, but I am sure that our committee chair should not be required to subject himself to disrespect any more than you should, Sir.
It is with great pleasure that I rise in the House today to speak to this important debate. As I have said, water is an important matter and an important resource for Canada. Compared to other parts of the world, Canada possesses a relative abundance of freshwater. My hon. colleague from Yellowhead has pointed out the volume of water that is within Canada's--